


when there's dirt between the dirt

by thimble



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 10:58:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tatsuya is the first person he ever jacks off to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when there's dirt between the dirt

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted from tumblr.

Tatsuya is the first person he ever jacks off to.

It’s crude, and it’s not the best thing to remember an older brother by; it’s kind of the worst, actually, but he’s twelve and a half, and he doesn’t have many people to choose from. He’s only just realizing that he looks at boys the way he knows boys are supposed to look at  _girls_ , and he can’t even begin to think of any of the guys from street ball while doing that. He’s not sure he can ever look them in the eye, much less play with them again. 

Slim pickings, that’s all it is. 

(Maybe he misses Tatsuya too, and this is the only way to take his mind off how much it  _sucks_  that he doesn’t even have a phone number, or email, or anything, doesn’t know which middle school he’s gone to, if Taiga will ever see him again.)

Nothing really comes out of it the first time. He pulls up his boxers and hides his sniffling into the crook of his arm, even if there’s no one there to see how he’s turned as red as his hair. His free hand — his dirty hand — finds the ring and he can almost feel it rusting from the sweat on his palm, from the desperate clench of his fist. 

 

* * *

 

Taiga is thirteen, and he sees Tatsuya every week, due to the most beautiful twist of fate.

(Almost as beautiful as Tatsuya’s basketball, or Tatsuya himself.)

He has more people to choose from now, and sometimes he does, but Tatsuya still features prominently. Predominantly, even. If Taiga thought his absence was bad then his presence just made it worse, because now his fantasies can be updated by something other than his imagination.

He knows he’s taller than Tatsuya now, by half an inch, and he’s confident that he’ll keep growing until Tatsuya has to tilt his head ever-so slightly upwards to look at him, until Taiga can have a different view of how his lashes touch his cheeks, the color of his bottom lip on the inside. He knows the texture of Tatsuya’s palms, rough as the rest of him is smooth from all that ball-handling, the endless practicing; he knows the depth of his voice when he gets a little out of breath. 

Taiga finds out that he still knows just how to steal one of Tatsuya’s smiles, the kind that reaches his eyes, and that his mouth might taste like pickles, which would be disgusting if it wasn’t Tatsuya, and he—

he’s still holding onto the ring when he comes. It’s become a habit of his.

 

* * *

 

He gets his heart broken when he is fourteen, and this is _definitely_  not something he’s supposed to feel for someone who’s supposed to be like a brother to him; though it’s too late to undo it, any of it, when he’s been falling for years. 

It’s in how they never got their fiftieth match; in the last words Tatsuya ever said to him,  _will_  ever say to him, as far as fate’s concerned. (She doesn’t give second chances to just anybody, and Taiga ruined the one he had.) It’s in how Tatsuya’s eyes, usually gentle, usually glass, turned hard, turned  _steel,_ like he’ll never let anyone in ever again; in how Taiga made that happen when they were supposed to be looking out for each other. 

He doesn’t let himself think of Tatsuya’s knuckles hitting his cheekbone until he’s back in Japan, in bed and alone. He doesn’t repeat Tatsuya’s promise to him, the one he deserves but doesn’t want, until he’s spilling over his fingers, his tears warm as they slide over the bruise. There’s still a pool of heat in his stomach but it’s no longer anything resembling desire.

It’s guilt.

(It’s the closest he’s ever come to hating basketball, and he wonders if that means he hates Tatsuya too.)

 

* * *

 

At sixteen he’s grown into his height — his shoulders have filled out nicely, and his calves are well-sculpted, despite all the Maji burgers he’s consumed — but not yet into his heart. It’s still too big, too open, despite appearances, and it’s something he’s sure his teammates have noticed but thankfully haven’t said anything about. 

That big heart catches into his throat on a cloudy afternoon in July, when Tatsuya walks into his life for the third time, proving him wrong about how fate worked. 

Taiga had been right about being taller than him, in the end, but it will take a lifetime to catch up to Tatsuya’s grace, if at all. Tatsuya is the same, and he is not; his face still doesn’t betray what he’s feeling, but his fingers are longer. He’s still heavy on Taiga’s mind, but on the court he moves like water, like the rain that’s slowly soaking them. 

Tatsuya leaves him a gift when they part, but it seems more like a sick joke. Their promise still hangs in the air. Tatsuya, he—

he still wears the ring around his neck, and it’s to that image that Taiga strokes himself to, flushed and ashamed as he pictures Tatsuya’s legs around his waist.

When he comes, he feels like the filth between the grooves of his shoes. His own ring burns hot on his skin, so much that it might sear right through him, right through the earth, to settle right next to the place he buried their brotherhood the day he purposely missed that fateful shot.


End file.
